We looooove celebrating the holidays, and were SO excited to throw our first party in our studio!

We had such a great time gathering greenery, gifts, gingerbread, and candy, as well as flooding our studio with bright twinkling lights. We wanted to find a way to make our guests feel loved and welcomed and creating gifts with Shutterfly made this party very special and personal!

First of all, we picked a theme! We went with our classic floral print, and got plates, blankets, serving trays and photo blocks with the matching print. We created a fun photo block hack by turning them into planters! You can use them for stacking and creating a centerpiece, filling with candy canes, using them as cutlery holders, using them for succulents, or mini christmas trees, like we did!

We wanted our guests to leave with a handful of gifts, and ones that were personal to each of them! It was so much fun to think about each guest that was coming, and pick a quote as well as set their table setting specific to them. All of our guests had name tags at their plates, but in addition to that, we had picked one of our favourite photos of our guest’s instagram account, and printed it on a pillow! We put it on their chairs, and had everyone find their seats, by finding the pillow with their photo on it. It was a fun surprise for our guests, and really cool to watch them discover and reminisce about their photo memory.

For our little sister, Vanessa, we chose a photo that she took while she was on a bus to Idaho with her track team. It was her first indoor meet, as well as the first snowfall of the season. We knew the photo was a special memory for her! The quote we chose for her mug was “Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.” - Mary OliverWe chose quotes from Mary Oliver, because she is one of our favourite poets! We chose quotes that we felt resonated with our friends photos, as well as their personalities.

There is something about the scent of warm apple cider that floods a room with magical nostalgia from seasons past. A sense of familiarity was welcomed in the room as well as pondering new thoughts and ideas (thanks to some happy inspirational words from Mary Oliver)